Shifting Lights
by tofsla
Summary: Autumn in a new city; a collection of puzzle-pieces that don't quite seem to fit together. Makishima tries to make it work. A fic about gender identity.


_Notes: A fic which is mostly about being queer, in a confused and poorly defined kind of way. A ludicrously self-indulgent piece, in which Makishima can't work out what the hell to do with the whole gender thing. Or, for that matter, with feelings. University fic._

_Spoilers for the manga, although not in a who wins or loses races kind of way._

* * *

**Shifting Lights**

* * *

Before Makishima has even had time to recover from the jetlag, term starts. Registration means lines to get a photo taken for ID, to get a computer pass. Forms and leaflets. A nervous sort of buzz of chatter from students milling about in the quad, sitting in little clusters on the steps of the main university building between tall white columns. Makishima is a bit too tired to manage to be properly nervous, which is probably for the best, and no-one tries to talk to him. He just keeps to himself, and tries to work out where he needs to go next. Everything is baffling and spread out, pressed in between rows of old brick houses and worn-out looking hotels, not exactly a campus.

In the introductory classes people do talk to him, and he has to try and squash his immediate impulse to distrust. No-one seems to have made up their mind to avoid him. It'd probably be more effort to avoid eating lunch with people than to just do it.

It'd definitely be more effort to avoid being dragged out drinking than to just do it, and everyone else seems to talk enough that he can just sit there and let conversations happen around him. It isn't exactly how he expected university to be. But it kind of runs on its own momentum without needing much active input from him, and that's good enough.

"Told you you'd be fine," his brother says, handing him tea over the kitchen table. It's the Wednesday of Freshers' Week, and Makishima, dealing with the queasiness of the first hangover of his life, wouldn't actually go so far as 'fine'—but it could be going worse.

* * *

_You'd better be training hard,_ Toudou writes. Makishima _is_ training, rides with the university bike club a couple of times a week and alone on quiet paths by canals and through parks otherwise—but he's also feeling more and more like he's running in circles just to keep up with his life, between work and writing academic essays in English and being dragged around the city by people who he still doesn't really know, and who he finds reasonably annoying when sober and only vaguely amusing when drunk.

Toudou is busy preparing for exams, of course. Makishima keeps thinking everyone he knows should be at university now too, or settling into jobs, but they're still months away from all of that. It's disorientating, a different sort of separation.

_Worry about Onoda,_ he writes back. _He'll beat both of us._

There's nothing from Tadokoro today, but a little message from Kinjou, surprisingly informal, with a photo of the team which must have been taken by—Kanzaki, he thinks. Everyone's in it, Onoda and Naruko laughing at something together while Imaizumi watches them carefully, Teshima and Aoyagi the only ones actually looking at the camera. Makishima has his arms around Kinjou and Tadokoro both, his face turned towards Tadokoro, and maybe he still looks a bit awkward but it feels weirdly warm and comforting to see it anyway, eases some bit of discomfort he didn't quite know he was carrying around.

In the photo, Tadokoro is grinning. He looks like he couldn't be happier. He should always get to look that comfortable, Makishima thinks, and it's possible he flushes a bit, embarrassed at the unexpected thought.

_Thanks_, he writes, although there are probably a dozen things he should say. He hopes Kinjou knows how much he means it. It'd be awful if he really had to spell it out.

* * *

The thing about university—university in another country—is that no-one knows what he's like. If he puts on nail polish no-one is going to know it's new. If he puts words to desires then no-one has to know it's any kind of big shift in his world. He could've been—anything, forever.

He does put on nail polish, sometimes. He buys some different clothes, picks what he wears depending mostly on who else is around at home. But he doesn't put anything into words. He doesn't really know what the words he's looking for are.

It becomes, to his vague horror and partial guilty relief, a sort of joke. Yuusuke is so meterosexual. No-one is angry and no-one takes it seriously.

He really doesn't understand people.

"You're so skinny you can kind of do whatever," Amanda says. "You can wear all that hideous girl stuff you own and it looks great. I hate boys who look better in that kind of thing than I do."

For a moment, he hates her right back—not jokingly, but a hot tight feeling that hits him out of nowhere, incoherent. It's only after he's left that he can really start to piece it together, something about all this shit about girl clothes and boy bodies. Something that isn't only about him and everything he's trying to understand but also about Tadokoro and awkward little hints that they never actually talked about, something both of them edged around. Not being quite—

You can get away with it because you're skinny, huh? And what exactly does she think he's getting away with?

* * *

For a while he retreats in on himself, claims deadlines and long shifts and a need to train harder with the bike club before his form is gone completely, none of which is untrue. But he also needs—another kind of people, which is how, despite everything he has to get done, he finds himself standing on a South London street on a Thursday night and trying to make up his mind.

It's still only October, but it's colder out than he thought and he's not really dressed for it—a jacket that's more for show than anything, thin jeans. He could still just go home, get right back onto the Northern line and tell his brother he went out but it was a dull party, roll into bed and bury himself under blankets and ignore all this stuff that scares the shit out of him and pulls at him. Sends him out to try and go to a club, even though he hates crowds and hates noise and hates letting things show. It's not as though he's ever been able to avoid that last one, though.

He stares down at his painted nails, the bracelets around his wrist, feeling irritable. His left hand is curled too hard around his damn phone, as though someone will call him and tell him what he's meant to do. But of course they won't. There's no-one here. On the other side of the world Tadokoro is probably out on his bike before school, working hard.

So, hey, Tadokorocchi—I was thinking—

Nah.

But if Tadokoro was here he'd grab Makishima, come on, what the hell are you waiting for, let's go. Makishima imagines being dragged along the uneven pavement past the shuttered windows of cafés and shops with one of Tadokoro's big hands warm around his arm, Tadokoro's face turned a little towards him, his profile under the yellow streetlights that'd probably make Makishima want to do something ridiculous. Imagines Kinjou a couple of steps behind them—not quite laughing at them. But nearly.

Makishima sighs, shoves his phone back into his pocket, and decides.

* * *

There's a strange, terrifying moment in the doorway when he almost freezes up under the sudden thought that everyone _knows_. He wants to laugh at himself. Of course everyone knows—isn't that the whole point of this kind of place? But the edge of panic doesn't quite leave.

It's not like he knows who he is himself. He hates people misunderstanding, he still feels hot and uncomfortable and embarrassed at the memory, but it'd also be somehow really unfair if everyone else could work it out first just by looking at him in his not-boy not-girl clothes. His weird slouch and his messy hair. All the things that he tries too hard at and the ones that just happen, adding up to something he doesn't understand, itchy and uncomfortable and persistent, just under the skin.

In line down a flight of stairs, dark and narrow and a bit sticky under the soles of his shoes. It _is_ noisy, a confusion of music and voices, shifting lights. All kinds of people. The prickly sense of being watched as he tries to squeeze between groups to find somewhere he can breathe.

He hadn't really thought further than this, going somewhere that wasn't full of straight people, just—making some kind of contact with something else, away from the university acquaintances he eats lunch with and their conversations about what women are like and whether they can ever be friends with men. His brother and his brother's girlfriend and their constant casual touching.

It doesn't quite work. It's almost everything he was after but all the wrong shape. He just misses—all kinds of stuff he wasn't very careful about when he had it, even more acutely now than before. A cautious, almost always unspoken sense of shared difference. And what exactly is it that he's meant to find here? He could maybe get laid, if he wanted to. But he feels weird about the idea, ends up snapping at a man who tries to buy him another drink. Aren't you a bit old.

Useless. He really can't blame the place. He's the one who doesn't quite fit anywhere.

* * *

The trains have stopped. On the night bus home he feels pale and strange, distanced from himself as he leans against the window, surrounded by conversations held by people who're even drunker than him, jostled and bothered until he's about ready to scream, torn between wanting air and wanting to get home. Behind him someone is standing by the bus doors, and their elbow keeps knocking against his head. He checks his email over and over with clumsy hands. In Japan, he kind of hated his damn phone—took ages to learn how to use it when he needed a new one, only answered one call in ten. This time he's learnt quickly.

The city lights blur and waver outside, the National Theatre glowing blue, glowing purple. Bridge after bridge, yellow lights away along the river.

Makishima closes his eyes, jerks them open again as the bus lurches around the corner onto the Strand.

If he e-mails Tadokoro he'll just say something terrible, he thinks, morose. Toudou might be easier. It's always easier with Toudou, at least in that way—to say, hey, I'm leaving—I thought you should know. Every time he imagined saying those kinds of words to Tadokoro and Kinjou, he thought his throat was going to close up. Such a coward.

* * *

Training is the thing that works best against homesickness, even though he's at this point being forced to admit to himself that it's people he misses most of all. It's still a type of connection—not a new one, but something that ties him back to high school. Long rides along lanes so densely lined with trees that it's like cycling through a long tunnel, shifting orange and red. Rolling downland roads climbing to soft peaks where sheep graze and he can see for miles over the low farmland on either side, toward the city or toward the hazy distant sea. It's really that feeling of freedom that it's always been, even in a new context.

The club is a strange mix of people who're really serious about the whole thing and people who're there for something fun to do on a weekend, and he doesn't quite recognise the way people talk about riding, finds himself existing a little to one side of the main social circles. But it's fine—mostly, it's fine.

He writes to Kinjou to tell him he'd hate it after one particularly chaotic hill climb, amused at himself. _If I coped with you and Tadokoro for three years I imagine I'd survive somehow_, Kinjou writes back, and Makishima imagines he can tease out inflection from the words, can almost hear Kinjou's quietly amused tone.

* * *

At night, music filters into his room from the next building over, people shout to each other on the distant Camden road. Makishima lies and stares at the ceiling, the thin yellow razor of light from the street-lamp outside which slips past the edge of his curtains. It's cold—it's always cold inside, here, even though the flat he shares with his brother is pretty good otherwise.

He still doesn't know if he's made any of the right decisions, these last few months. He needed some kind of a shift, and the opening was right there—but nothing is quite falling into place anyway. He has a lot of pieces and none of them fit together.

For some reason, it's rather hard to sleep.

[fin]


End file.
